9 C.O.’s are serving as ‘guinea pigs’ in experiments at the University of Minnesota to determine international standards regarding the minimum amount of vitamins necessary to sustain healthy adult life. Results should be valuable in making possible better use of available supplies, especially during the postwar period. Two of the men [George Cain and Walter Carlson] serve as lab technicians as well. 1943.

CPS Unit No. 115, subunit 10, located at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts, subjected COs to experiments on the effects of drinking sea water.

Dr. Allan M. Butler directed this OSRD project testing the toxicity of seawater to help determine emergency rations for life boats. The Harvard Medical School Department of Pediatrics sponsored the project from September 1943 to December 1945, for which six or seven men volunteered. The American Friends Service Committee provided agency oversight.

Since the concern for persons in life boats was evaporation of body liquids, studies examined the effects of drinking sea water, along with other possibilities for replacing fluids. Five CPS volunteers spent two weeks in a life raft in Cotuit Bay near Boston. A discovery was that men could overcome evaporation “by soaking their clothes and hanging over the side of the raft for five minutes every half hour”. (Keim p. 79)